International Social Research Methods

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The first part of the Framework provides headers and a checklist of questions that should be used selectively in writing up International Social Research Methods Case Studies for the ReStore web resource repository. Many of these questions can also be found in the relevant chapters of the web companion to International Comparative Research at http://www.palgrave.com/research/hantrais/

What was the research context for your project (postgraduate / post-doctoral research, EU Framework programme project, research council award, government funding, other)?

1.1.2

What was your role in the project (lone researcher, research assistant, co-ordinator, partner)?

1.1.3

What research and personal skills, competencies and experience did you bring to the project (topic, discipline, linguistic and cultural knowledge, previous experience of working in international contexts or organisations, and / or with other team members)

Were you seeking to describe or explain a phenomenon? Were you seeking to examine / test a hypothesis? Were you aiming to generate theoretical insights? Or were you aiming to do all three?

1.3.6

To what extent were the questions or phenomena (for example a policy issue) relevant or did they make sense in all the countries / societies under study and for the researchers with whom you were working?

1.3.7

How did your research questions (together with epistemological and theoretical underpinnings) shape your research design and determine the choice of methods?

1.3.8

If you had several different research questions, each with different aims, did you consider the need for a research design that called for different methods?

What sources of background information and secondary data did you draw on in preparing the research proposal?

1.4.2

Which funders / sponsors did you approach and why?

1.4.3

If you approached more than one funding body, how did you need to adapt the proposal for different funders?

1.4.4

What was your experience of the application process: what problems did you encounter and how did you deal with them?

1.4.5

What level of resourcing did you receive (duration, budget, scope and scale of the research)?

1.4.6

What were the contractual arrangements stipulated in the award (duration of funding, staged payments, scheduling of meetings, room for negotiation, reporting requirements)?

1.4.7

What were the requirements of funders concerning the number and nature of partners / units of comparison, and the distribution of project management responsibilities?

1.4.8

How did the requirements of your funders / sponsors influence and constrain the scope of the project, (choice of the research topic and question, team structure, research design, units of comparison, methods, findings and outputs)?

1.4.9

To what extent was funding tied to policy relevance and policy impact and how were you expected to address policy issues in the research?

1.4.10

How much leverage did you have to make changes to the research design and methods in the course of the project?

1.4.11

What were the support staff needs (research, administration, translators, trainers) for the project?

1.4.12

Did you receive logistic support from your institution? If so, were you charged for it against your project budget?

Did you manage your project by yourself; together with a home team; in conjunction with researchers from other institutions in your own country and / or across sectors; or in conjunction with partners / key informants based in other countries?

1.5.2

Did you act as the overall project coordinator?

1.5.3

How many people did the team include and what was the mix in terms of status, time available for the project and length of contract?

1.5.4

What was the disciplinary mix of team members, and to what extent was it determined by the funders, the research questions and the methods to be used?

1.5.5

What research skills and competences did you and your team members need to have?

1.5.6

What were the expectations of researchers from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds in terms of the objectives, research design and methods to be used in the research project?

1.5.7

What were the implications of team size and composition for the organisation of work ’packages’, venues, timing and duration of meetings and budgeting?

1.5.8

What strategies did you put in place to manage communication, meetings, the division of labour, deadlines for submitting deliverables at various stages in the project, the final report and the dissemination of findings to different audiences?

1.5.9

What arrangements did you make to deal with researchers from different disciplinary, linguistic and cultural backgrounds (intellectual traditions, methodological preferences, contentious concepts, attitudes to authority, cultural bias, time-keeping, drafting of reports, institutional demands)?

1.5.10

How far were team members involved in the choice of research design and methods and in their development in the course of the study?

1.5.11

How were junior researchers accommodated and encouraged?

1.5.12

How were team members who lacked experience in writing reports, writing in English, or in using particular research methods supported and trained?

1.5.13

If your project involved fieldwork, who conducted it and how were they trained?

1.5.14

What languages did team members speak? What was the common language? If English, what were the implications for the research process, and how were they managed? Did you personally have in-depth knowledge of the languages and cultures of the units of comparison?

1.5.15

Who wrote up the data analysis and findings, and who drafted and edited reports?

What were the legal requirements in the countries / societies / cultures where the research was being conducted, and also in applicable international law, with regard to issues of conflict of interest, data protection, permissions, libel, intellectual property, procurement and confidentiality?

1.6.2

What arrangements did you make to ensure that these requirements were met?

1.6.3

What arrangements did you make to avoid social and personal harm (discrimination, consent)?

1.6.4

How did you ensure that researcher and other forms of bias would be avoided?

1.6.5

How did you plan to check for accuracy, consistency and comprehensiveness in data collection, reporting, analysis and interpretation?

1.6.6

How did you plan to validate the findings?

1.6.7

What were the requirements of your sponsors regarding acknowledgement of their support and release of the findings?